


Of Wives and Lies

by archea2



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>And is your wife away for long?</i>"</p><p>Sherlock, once again, fails to deduce a spouse's gender. Spoilers for ASIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Wives and Lies

Sally’s little Panda car is vibrant with notes of orange, limes, bergamot and a few baritone spices, as she maneuvers it deftly into Brixton Road. Sitting next to her, Anderson waits until the last black-and-yellow tape has angled out of the rear window. Then he turns his head, gives an all-dramatic sniff, and narrows his eyes at her.  
  
The next moment, the two of them are fairly hooting with laughter.  
  
"Oh god," Anderson says, then "oh god" again, and again till – "He nearly freaked  _me_  out," Sally splutters, and Anderson’s soft nasal key pitches up half an octave in response. " _And is your wife away for long?_ " Which sparks a new gale of whooping as the road speeds them towards Westminster Bridge, still a blind spot on the windshield.  
  
"God, I was really expecting him to out us there and then. Well, not us. You know.  _Us_."  
  
"My fault." Sally’s voice is penitent enough between two hiccups "I laid it on a bit thick, this time – the perfume  _and_  the taunting. Should have known better. Still – given his age and probable income, you’d think he could tell deodorant from Guerlain’s pet male lotion and cut his deductions some slack. Does the great Sherlock Holmes never ever read  _Cosmo_? Hell, even my Gran begged for a drop of Habit Rouge on her hankie!"  
  
"Well, he probably steers clear of eau de toilette as a rule," Anderson says mildly. "Might hinder him in nosing out data."  
  
"His brother is just as sharp-nosed, so you say, and he knows about Habit Rouge. Probably knows about girls liking it, too."  
  
"Not only that. He also knows that you crave champagne truffles and nick half the comfits he always brings back from the Middle East. And I swear I never told him."  
  
"Shhh, you. Now you’re making it sound like I'm some sort of paid companion. I’d rather be the Met's honorary slut if I have a say in the matter – me for the glam."  
  
"Oh, for God’s sake, Sal... look, I’ll drop Lestrade a hint first thing tomor -"  
  
"Hey. Role distribution, remember ? I keep Freak off the scent (stop laughing now, you sweet cretin, I can’t drive all foggy-eyed at night!), you keep Mr Churchill happy. And Mr Churchill keeps Britannia hip-hopping on the waves, meaning he’s away half the time he should be here taking care of you. Not my idea of a masterplan, but I don’t mind teaming up as long as there’s no fourth party involved."  
  
Silence becomes the third party in the car as it snakes its familiar way into London, heading for Belgravia’s exclusive little hive of diplomacy and white stucco.  
  
"He tries to – compensate," Anderson says at last, gazing straight ahead. "With the gifts. I wish he wouldn’t. He more than makes it up to me when he’s here."  
  
"I know, sweetie. And there he is." Sally stops the car and leans over to give her best friend an arm-hug. "Off you go. And this wicked girl, she’s driving straight on to Soho to eat fishcakes with telly sauce. Unless –" But her last word is lost on Anderson as he slams the car door, waves to her across the glass and nods to the stocky shadow stationed before one of the smaller maisonnettes.  
  
Sally whisks her car around and checks the petrol, hoping she won’t have to go back upon her word. Lestrade has kept them unfashionably late on the new crime scene and Gran always frets if she doesn’t make it home in time for the evening news.  
  
\---------------------------------  
  
Four strides to the door are all it takes for the gold band to journey from Anderson’s left hand to his right. The next morning will see the gesture repeated mirrorwise. It has slipt into a year-worn habit, this back and forth – a ritual, they tell each other when the gesture takes its toll.  
  
But once through the door, everything is as should be, and more. More precious than the deep honey panelling setting off Mycroft’s collection of Queen Anne sugar bowls, or David and Greg (their respective head cushions) snuggling cheek to jowl on the couch, is the fact that the whole vast room has found its center of gravity in the man rising carefully from his knees before the chimney grate.  
  
"Dear me. Sergeant Donovan is always welcome to light a fire here. But unless she nurses a personal grudge against the oak tree, I’d advise a few less logs and a little more space inbetween."  
  
Anderson is already bridging the other space. "Sal needs more practice, yes. But she loves trying. Says it reminds her of her childhood in the K—"  
  
Mycroft’s mouth on his always jolts a tender nerve in his chest – perhaps because their identical six feet two, apart from making them Sherlock's size equals (hear hear), allows them to kiss without one of them having to bend his head. Taken by surprise, Anderson retaliates by looping an arm round Mycroft’s waist and giving as good as he gets - which is inordinately good.  
  
"I’ve missed you," the mouth whispers as it dips to Anderson's chin, then lower, pressing against his throat with a satisfied hum. "Hmmm. You’re wearing the Guerlain."  
  
"Of course I am," Anderson says, chuckling a little against the kiss. "And before you tell me how conducive to lust that is – somebody else deduced that for you."  
  
"Ah." Mycroft looks up at his spouse, chin a-tilt, then wraps an arm round his waist and walks him to the couch, where David and Gregory are looking up, a little pinched and flattened (when she stays over, Sally makes a point of sleeping with of them), but obviously glad to see them rejoined. There's a bottle of Mouton-Rothschild 69 with two glasses in attendance; Mycroft pours the wine.  
  
"So tell me about your day at work, dear."  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
Only one of them will tell the other about his day at work. This is a tenet of their life, blessed and quipped in turn, in fear that the secrecy should harden into silence between them. "Habit Rouge", for instance, followed close on Anderson’s complaint that Mycroft is fully tailored in red tape. Their life is seamed in by too many secrets, Anderson thinks, but it is his chosen life and cannot be changed.  
  
And their cloudy routine has its silver lining. For one thing, Mycroft is a beautiful listener. Eager – alert – curious – his face acknowledging each shred of trivia with a little pulse of interest. It used to surprise Anderson, but no longer. Of course Mycroft enjoys his eagle view of the world. Who wouldn’t? But every eagle, now and then, must long for a peep at ground level, a peck at the humble twigs and clots and... and caterpillars, Anderson thinks, remembering his blue worksuit, as a change from his eternal panorama. And so, Anderson provides the twigs and clots. He still marvels that his voice, which he never liked ("Doctor Duck", he knows, is his Yard alias) should make Mycroft so attentive, so warmly attuned to him, but he loves a rapt Mycroft and does his best to ply him with all the gossips of his odd, ordinary days.  
  
Tonight, he is telling Mycroft about the house at Lauriston Gardens. He describes the faux mosaic floor and the cat’s craddle of shadows on the ancient walls, and the woman up there, Jennifer Wilson, killed in the pink of lust.

"... And ?" says Mycroft.

And Sherlock, bursting upstairs with indifferent stamina and a man, a stranger, a doctor with a limp and a polite uneasy way about him.

"Ah," says Mycroft, but his eyelashes keep still in the fireglow. This is no news to him.  
  
Anderson, clever storyteller that he is, keeps the dedodorant fiasco for the end, on the off-chance that Mycroft will laugh at Sherlock's blunder and dismiss him from his thoughts. Sherlock has an annoying tendency to jeopardize their evenings  _in absentia_.  
  
Mycroft laughs duly. Then says "... And?"  
  
Anderson sighs. His spouse can always tell when he lops off part of the tale.  
  
"I – tried to deduce something while he was there." He is trying to keep his voice smooth, but the snag in his throat will not be ignored. "About that word, _Rache_. I told him it was German for revenge and he...oh well. Acted on my hunch, you could say. Sal had riled him a bit hard just before."  
  
"That was clever of you, actually," Mycroft murmurs. "You and I know that one needn’t be German-born to speak German. Right,  _Liebster_?"  
  
And the snag dissolves as Anderson leans in for another kiss.

He knows. He remembers.  
  
\---------------------------------------  
  
His Ashkenazi grandparents changed their name in 1935, after they fled Berlin. They dropped the H as a tribute to their adoptive country, only to have the tables turned on them thirty years later, when Anderson’s parents called their first and only child Andersohn as a memorial gesture.  
  
This is the tale he once told Mycroft in the recherché little Moroccan restaurant, making the stranger across the salt-cellar privy to his most precious family secret. Knowing, even then, that there wouldn't be much he'd be able to withhold if they met again.  
  
"Bit inconsiderate of them, really, because Andersohn means ‘the other son’ in German. So it became a joke in our neighbourhood, they kept asking after my brother. I felt a bit of a stand-in."  
  
Mycroft had smiled, his face sharpened in candlelight, while Anderson felt as giddy as five weeks earlier, when a stranger materialized in a hospital cubicle saying "Doctor Anderson? I'm Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s brother. I was given to understand that it was you who performed CPR after his... unfortunate venture into that second garage. I don't know how to thank you." It was the steady static of power, no less pungent for being channelled into gratitude, that stilled Anderson’s quick reply ("By telling him to warn us  _before_  he deduces suicide by carbon monoxide?") and made him hold out his hand.

"Ah, but you escaped the Pick-a-Prophet Trend." Mycroft, stretching his arm over the table to sweeten Anderson’s glass with all the perfumes of Arabia. "Mummy was all set for Habakkuk or Abednego until Father came up with Micah for me. And Sherlock doesn’t know it, but he was very close to being Shadrach for the rest of his days. My first diplomatic parlay, I think. I was ten. It was half a success."  
  
He had laughed in the trail of the wry chuckle and, for the first time, found that he had it in him to laugh at himself. The giddiness of that beat the wine and static united, so that when Mycroft’s car later stopped before his flat, and Mycroft whispered "Shall I call on you again?", Anderson gave him a loud, clear, immediate answer before he got in and all but collapsed in his shoe closet.  
  
\-----------------------------------------------  
  
Their kissing is willingly unhurried, a moist counterpoint to the fire’s crackle.  
  
Anderson’s fingers move to the tight knot of silk at his lover’s throat, even as his lips work Mycroft’s guarded mouth into release; finding the catch in his lover’s breath and holding him to it; pressing on with tongue and the tiniest, tenderest hint of teeth, until the tie is coming loose in his hand, and Mycroft is sighing into his mouth.  
  
This is their hour.  
  
This is their homecoming.  
  
Unwitnessed by the world as they lie in each other's arms, Mycroft’s cheek pressed to the old-gold leather that will leave its crease on the softer flesh. Outside, the evening lets go of the day, their imperfect day with its burden of clots and twigs, dead woman’s brittle nails, scratching a dead child’s name, Sherlock's taunts, Mycroft’s Titanic obligations to the living. Anderson closes his eyes and rests his forehead against his husband's receding hairline. There will be a time for dining, soon enough, and a time for less exiguous bedding, but right now he simply wants time to forget all about them, and —  
  
— the Beatles’ jaunty throb jerks him half upright.  _Hell_. Only Sally has his private number and if she’s calling tonight of all nights —  
  
He can feel Mycroft's long form rising to a vertical position at his side as he gropes for his phone under the cushions. Five seconds later, he is swearing profusely and Mycroft is lighting the ceiling lamp.  
  
"Hold on," he instructs the phone tersely, turning to face Mycroft. "Your brother's  _brilliant_  cooperative agenda has just earned him a surprise drugs bust. From what I saw today, he’s clean. Please,  _please_  tell me that his place is next to godly and that we can sit back and enjoy whatever it is that smells like Eden warmed up in the kitchen."  
  
But Mycroft is sporting his patented "this-boy-will-be-the-true-reason-behind-our-next-AAA-collapse" look and Anderson's teeth clench briefly at the sight. 

"All right then. Tell them I’ll be joining the posse... where again? Thanks. See you there, Sal."  
  
"I’m sorry... I can’t – couldn’t possibly – he’s only moved into his new flat yesterday." Mycroft’s voice is wretched, but Anderson feels too drained and thunderous to do more than hiss "I’ve volunteered. Don't know when I'll be back, so you’d be wise to start dinner without me."  
  
"Check his kitchen first if you can," Mycroft pleads back — not his best diplomatic move, since the Edenic smell of _bœuf Strogonoff_  is doing little to lighten Anderson’s mood. Trust bloody Sherlock to bust their first conjugial tyrst of the month. He’d better have something tasty in  _his_  kitchen unless he wants it turned into a bona fide crime scene inside the next hours.  
  
\------------------------------------------  
  
It is not that he hates Sherlock, who, after all, played blind Cupid with a little help from carbon monoxide. Sometimes Sherlock’s presence even acts as a painkiller when Mycroft is abroad, for Anderson’s craft has made him sensitive to the matching of bloods and genes, and Sherlock’s face, raised to his in antagonism, mirrors his elusive brother’s in a thousand little detours of flesh and manners that neither is willing to acknowledge.  
  
It moves something wistful in Anderson, this brotherly pact, even as he gripes at Sherlock.  
  
Sometimes he wishes they could be friends. Sometimes, when the tug of secrecy gets too much and Mycroft’s face crumples with unspoken worry at his brother’s antics, he says he won't work with Sherlock.

Sometimes, he tries to detect something for Sherlock.

Sometimes he walks up to him aping Mycroft’s easy domineering stride, checking for a reaction that never comes, and feels tempted to rearrange the clues into spelling HELLO BROTHER-IN-LAW HERE. More often than not, he has a good laugh with Sal over the whole crazy issue.  
  
All in all, it _is_  confusing, and he cannot blame Sherlock for thinking him a fool.  
  
 _Familien, die sind ein zweischneidiges Messer._  Thus spoke his beloved grandmother over the coffee pot and three-cornered cakes, rocking back and forth in the ancient cane chair that had seen better days before Hitler. A family is a two-faced knife – it protects and it cuts apart, it deals you wounds along with your daily bread. Anderson has given Sherlock a taste of his cutting edge and will again, but he will also do whatever it takes to shield Mycroft’s little brother if Lestrade is serious about the damn drugs bust.  
  
"Kitchen," he breathes into Sal’s ear and she gives him a quick hand-hug, whispering "I’ll try to keep it short", their voices meeting across the landlady’s gentle wail as they climb the stairs.  
  
\------------------------------------------  
  
As it turns out, midnight is done and gone when Anderson sees Mycroft again.  
  
He is standing in the first small street that caught his eye, well out of his third crime scene of the day, when the black Leviathan purs into a halt and a window is lowered just enough for Mycroft’s voice to be heard.  
  
"Thank you for texting me."  
  
Anderson steps gingerly into the car, weighing his options. By the time he is seated and going for a minimalist "Yes", the issue is settled by the chauffeur, who turns about to present him with something bulky, piping hot and swaddled in white linen. The car starts again. Anderson unfolds the napkin and peels the cover off a – oh god, do they really own a  _monogrammed_  Tupperware?  
  
"I thought the beef might be... a little disagreeable in these circumstances," Mycroft observes, never taking his eyes from Anderson. "But you must be hungry. Tired and hungry. There is, ah, parmigiani in the side pocket. I was – that is, I was hoping –" The last word is expelled in a rush of breath, past the tight knot of silk that once more stands guard at Mycroft’s throat, marking him out as his public origami self.

The eagle looks down at his shoes and falls back into silence.  
  
Anderson manages two spoonfuls of  _fusilli alla caprese_  before he pushes the dish aside and searches his coat pocket. "Here," he says simply, switching his phone to its camera option. "Took this for you."  
  
He can hear Mycroft’s relief in the laugh that greets his gift, both of them aware that it confers absolution for the ruined evening. "My oh my," Mycroft prattles happily, staring at the screen. "It’s been quite a...colourful day, eh?"  
  
Anderson snorts, diving back into the Tupperware. "Saw you with him – with them," he corrects through a mouthful of pasta. "Y'were speaking to that man, John."  
  
« Ah yes, the Army doctor. Interesting specimen, John Watson. I think he proved sufficiently reliable to be entrusted with Sherlock’s wellcare. »  
  
Anderson (thinking of one neat shot across two sheets of glass and a bullet which, when coaxed out of the corpse’s back, might prove sufficiently reliable to indict an Army weapon) times his next spoonful so he doesn’t have to answer.  
  
Mycroft stirs closer, letting their shoulders brush. "One burden off my back. And my agenda, God willing, leaving me time to indulge in less... brotherly concerns.  _Liebster_."  
  
There is no telling if he is pushing his advantage or making a lover’s bright promise – both, probably. It is the two-faced knife all over again, but Anderson knows better than to ignore the fenceman’s thrust. He sets the Tupperware down on the car floor between their feet, and, in one quick motion, slides back into Mycroft’s waiting arms.

"Stop worrying," he snaps fondly. "They’re both going to be cleared and their flat is pristine. And now, can we have an embargo on all Sherlockian topics? ’m getting back to work in exactly seven hours, Mycroft. I want to spend them all in my husband’s exclusive company."  
  
"The feeling is mutual." Mycroft’s arms are pulling him into a tighter embrace. "Still – shall I tell you just one more little thing? That Sherlock doesn’t know yet, because he never bothered to inquire?"  
  
There’s a teasing edge to the voice, and a smile against Anderson's cheek.  
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
"I had my people fill me in on the wretched little man while you were parsing him above. The good Inspector probably did the same, though I don't think he informed you of our common discovery."  
  
"Hmmm?" The hydrocarbons are slowly but surely dragging Anderson over the thin line between peace and sleep. "Wha’ discov’ry ?"  
  
"Sherlock’s would-be murderer is – was – one Jeffrey Hope Wilson."  
  
Anderson’s eyes blink suddenly alert in the thyme-scented penumbra. "Wilson? You mean, as in Jennifer Wilson?"  
  
"In-deed. It seems that your services were trying to contact him all evening, to notify him of his wife’s untimely death. Quite a redundant precaution. Did you spot the torn photograph on his rear-view mirror,  _Liebster_? I don’t know about the other three, but given Sherlock’s deductions about the late Mrs Wilson’s love life... I think my brother owes you an apology."  
  
"Oh..." Anderson is fully awake now, and conscious of grinning madly in the dark. "You mean..."  
  
"I mean that your instinct led you to the truth before anyone else. In her case, it  _was_  a Revenge Tragedy. Well done, my very dear."  
  
They are laughing at unison as the Belgravia clocks strike the first hour of a brave new day, and a door opens to their second, definite homecoming.  
  
FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> In the BBC cast credit list, the Cabbie only appears as "Jeff" - a wink at ACD's original character, Jefferson Hope.


End file.
